A blog dedicated to coverage of rock news, reviews of CD's/DVD's, live gigs and interviews with musicians who have made rock music great!
Coverage of hard rock, classic rock, AOR and popular melodic rock music across the genre.
This blog is the creation of Alun Williams, a Brit now living in Michigan whose previous credits include writing for the following sites:
www.classicrock.about.com
www.classicrockrevisited.com
and www.rocknrolluniverse.com (Now gone)
I hope you enjoy your visit here!

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Monday, July 4, 2011

Brief News Update for Monday 4th July, 2011

First of all folks, Happy 4th July, to American's everywhere or those of us, who maybe aren't American's or not yet anyway, but live in the good old U.S. of A!

Hope you've had a great weekend, hey, you still have Monday off too, eh?!

I know, the site's been a little different lately right ..., a few more reviews up, but not too much news, well, sometimes it's just how it pans out folks ...

I needed to catch up with some reviews and there's more in the works, don't fret, also a live review of an originally British band, now kind of split between two Brit's and three Americans, The Sweet!

A good live band for sure with original Sweet founding member Steve Priest (Bass/Vocals), Stuart Smith (Guitar/Vocals), Joe Retta (Lead vocals), Richie Onori (Drums) and Stevie Stewart (Keyboards/vocals).

I caught them live on Saturday night, here in Michigan, Downtown Mt. Clemens Stars and Stripes festival and spent a little time with them - Great guys, each of them! - and the gig review will be up on the site soon.

Anyway, on with some updates! Cheers, Al

3 Doors Down new album 'Time of My Life,' coming soon

3 Doors Down, the guys that brought you a whole load of hits including 'Kryptonite,' 'When You're Gone,' 'Here Without You,' 'Away From The Sun,' 'Let Me Go,' 'Landing In London,' 'It's Not My Time' and so many more, have their new album'Time of My Life' released on July 19th.

If you pre-order it now, through www.newburycomics.com you might just pick up a pre-order copy with an autographed booklet!

Jorn Lande is considered as one of the leading voices in nowadays classic Hard Rock and Heavy Metal world. Often described as the “Norse God of Metal”, Jorn is certainly one of the leaders of the renaissance of classic Hard Rock on its highest level and one of the most prolific and sought-after singers of today, whose immense vocal talent has reserved him a status of a living legend to be counted amongst the greatest giants in the history of rock.

Jorn Lande became widely known in the Hard Rock / Metal community singing for such bands as Millenium, Ark and finally Masterplan, the band featuring former Helloween guitar player Roland Grapow. He also guested on several projects such as the Allen Lande albums (with Symphony X singer Russell Allen), Avantasia, Beyond Twilight and Brazen Abbot. However he also has his own band project JORN, who debuted with in the year 2000 and with whom he has released 8 successful studio albums so far.

2010 was an important year for Jorn. Besides releasing his tribute album to Ronnie James Dio, he also took part to the final Heaven & Hell concert in Victoria Park, London together with Glenn Hughes on vocals.JORNappeared a few weeks earlier at the Sweden Rock Festival in Solvesborg where they took a crowd of 20,000 + by storm.

This live CD / DVD is the ultimate legacy of Jorn as and artist and band where they focus on the band’s repertoire and set a Hard Rock crowd on fire!

This update piece on George Lynch (Dokken, Lynch Mob), has been just posted over on Gibson.com

Former Dokken guitarist George Lynch is a breed apart from most of his six-string cohorts. The 56-year-old axeman, whose newKill All Control album hits stores on July 19, is an admitted scavenger and mad scientist when it comes to his trademark instrument.

The man behind “Mr. Scary” told www.GuitarWorld.com that the tinkering started when, as a 10-year-old, he remodeled his first electric guitar with a hacksaw, swapping “the terrible pickups with new crappy pickups.” He also set about creating his own amps.

“I kept the old cabinets and stacked them on top of each other to make it look like I had a bunch of amps,” he said. “I would make these cabinets six feet tall, so they would look impressive, but they would only have one speaker in them. I made them out of Masonite and fiberglass and covered them with green shag carpet. Since I didn't know what I was doing, the new cabinets sounded horrible.”

Lynch continued to build guitars during his years as an up-and-coming fretburner on the L.A. metal scene in the early ’80s.

“I used to assemble guitars for a lot of my students to supplement my income while I was teaching in various places. One of the people I worked for was Delores Rhoads, Randy Rhoads' mother, for a while. Randy got the Ozzy gig, but I got his teaching job. I would get $5 to $10 an hour, but I had kids to support, so I would build guitars for my students to supplement my teaching income.”

To this day, Lynch’s hunt for parts takes him to places like a Los Angeles computer scrapyard.

“I come here to scavenge for parts for guitar and amplifiers and whatnot,” he admitted.

“They have everything from amplifier tubes to torpedoes. If there was an earthquake, you'd be buried under all the crap, because they have stacks of junk that are 30 feet in the air.”